Robyn O'Neil WE, THE MASSES

A self-described “maker of worlds,” Los Angeles-based artist Robyn O’Neil’s wry humor
infuses her well-known apocalyptic drawings—ten years of which form the basis for
the award-winning short film, WE, THE MASSES, 2011. After attending Werner Herzog’s
Rogue Film School where she met Irish director Eoghan Kidney, the two teamed up to
bring O’Neil’s drawings to life in a thirteen-minute, stop motion animation. The film
explores futility, hope, and self-inflicted wounds as it swings between the foibles
of human nature and the epic sweep of the natural world. Actions include a sweatsuit
wearing man falling out of foreboding grey clouds, fruitless encounters with a group
of similarly attired men, and a tsunami that engulfs the encampment. While seemingly
a linear narrative, resolution never arrives because, as the artist states, “Endings
can be inconclusive, but yet are still called ‘endings.’ They are also starting points; things
must end so that something else will happen.”

Supported by a grant from the Irish Film Board, WE, THE MASSES is presented at the CWAM courtesy of the artist and Susan Inglett Gallery, New York.
The recently published book, Robyn O’Neil: Twenty Years of Drawing (2017) is available through Archon Projects.

About the Artist

Robyn O’Neil (b. 1977, Omaha, Nebraska) lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She has been
had major solo exhibitions at the Des Moines Art Center and at the Contemporary Arts
Museum, Houston, Texas. Her work was included in the Whitney Museum of American Art's
Whitney Biennial (2004), Dargerism at The American Folk Art Museum, New York (2008), and Multiverse: Stories of This World and Beyond at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City (2017). O’Neil is the recipient
of numerous grants and awards, including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in 2008
and the Hunting Prize in 2009. She also hosts one of the highest rated poetry & literature
podcasts “ME READING STUFF.”